Crowdsourcing: Blue Eyed Players

Earlier this week, Josh Hamilton created some headlines when he claimed his eye color was the cause of his struggles during day games. ESPN found an optometrist who supports his theory, so maybe it’s not as crazy as it initially sounded. I immediately wanted to look at the data to see if other blue-eyed players had similar struggles in the day time, but realized that there isn’t exactly a comprehensive database of eye color for Major Leaguers.

But, the FanGraphs audience watches a lot of baseball (when they’re not staring at spreadsheets, anyway), and you guys have some observational powers, so I’d like to try crowdsourcing this. Here’s what I’m asking from you guys – in the comments, give us evidence of players who have blue eyes. Photos are probably the best option, but an article from a reputable source that references a player’s blue eyes probably works too.

If we can get a decent sized sample of players who can be confirmed to have blue eyes, we can look and see how they did in day games compared to night games, and see whether there’s anything to Josh Hamilton’s claims after all. Once we have a decent amount of names, we’ll crunch the data and report the results.

Go crowd go.